VCU Massey Cancer Center physician-researcher Charles E. Geyer, Jr., M.D., was the National Protocol Officer for one component of a large national study involving two National Cancer Institute (NCI)-supported clinical trials ...

(HealthDay)—Adding the drug Herceptin to chemotherapy for certain breast cancer patients increases overall survival and reduces the risk of recurrence compared to chemotherapy alone, new research shows.

(Medical Xpress)—For the first time, researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have revealed the molecule αvβ6 (alpha v beta 6) plays a fundamental role in helping breast cancer cells to ...

Australian researchers have identified a potentially treatable subtype of pancreatic cancer, which accounts for about 2% of new cases. This subtype expresses high levels of the HER2 gene. HER2-amplified breast ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a positive review of a breast cancer drug from Roche that could soon become the first pharmaceutical option approved for treating early-stage disease before ...

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche says it is abandoning a patent for top-selling breast cancer drug Herceptin in the Indian market, paving the way for local drugmakers to make a cheaper generic version.

Cancer drugs known as ErbB inhibitors have shown great success in treating many patients with lung, breast, colon and other types of cancer. However, ErbB drug resistance means that many other patients do ...

The HER2 growth-factor gene is known to be over-active in breast and gastro-esophageal cancers. But now, irregularities in the genes 's expression—among them mutations, amplifications, substitutions, and translocations—have ...

By tracking changes in patients' blood, Cambridge scientists have created a new way of looking at how tumours evolve in real-time and develop drug resistance. The research was published in the print edition ...

Is the era of targeted therapy for breast cancer at hand? It could be, said experts at the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine – at least for a certain population of women.

Women with triple-negative breast cancer are more likely to have high levels of the MET biomarker in their tumours, making it a good new target for cancer drugs according to research published in the British Jo ...

Trastuzumab

Trastuzumab (Herceptin) is a monoclonal antibody that interferes with the HER2/neu receptor.

The HER receptors are proteins that are embedded in the cell membrane and communicate molecular signals from outside the cell to inside the cell, and turn genes on and off. The HER proteins regulate cell growth, survival, adhesion, migration, and differentiation—functions that are amplified or weakened in cancer cells. In some cancers, notably some breast cancers, the HER2 receptor is defective and stuck in the "on" position, and causes breast cells to reproduce uncontrollably, causing breast cancer.

Antibodies are molecules from the immune system that bind selectively to different proteins. Trastuzumab is an antibody that binds selectively to the HER2 protein. When it binds to defective HER2 proteins, the HER2 protein no longer causes cells in the breast to reproduce uncontrollably. This increases the survival of people with cancer. However, cancers usually develop resistance to trastuzumab.

The original studies of trastuzumab showed that it improved survival in late-stage (metastatic) breast cancer, but there is controversy over whether trastuzumab is effective in earlier stage breast cancer.[citation needed] Trastuzumab is also controversial because of its cost, as much as $100,000 per year[citation needed], and while certain private insurance companies in the U.S. and government health care systems in Canada, the U.K. and elsewhere have refused to pay for trastuzumab for certain patients, some companies have since accepted trastuzumab treatment as a covered preventative treatment.

Trastuzumab was originally developed in mice, as a mouse antibody. Because humans have immune reactions to mouse proteins, it was later developed into a human (humanized) antibody. Because the antibodies were produced from one cell that was grown into a clone of identical cells, it is called a monoclonal antibody.

Trastuzumab is also being studied for use with other cancers. It has been used with some success in women with uterine papillary serous carcinomas that overexpress HER2/neu.